Labour's Crucible

From the New Politics site, a discussion of the latest AFL-CIO convention:

On climate change, undoubtedly the victors were a conservative bloc composed of the building trades and the extractive industrial unions. The UMW, despite its militant tradition, from spearheading the CIO to the Miners for Democracy movement, stuck by their immediate interests in defending the coal industry from environmental constraints.

Yeah, this is a big problem in terms of the traditional left or even Democratic Party coalition building. Because beyond just the guys building pipelines or mining coal there are lots of workers spread throughout the entire economy who are justifiably nervous about the coming climate disruption. Because for decades the leadership has tried to have it both ways; in solidarity with the "green turtles" when it come to globalization while also protecting their fossil fuel infrastructure jobs, now they have no allies to turn to. We can cry about a "just transition" all we want but there is no organized labor threat to back it up. It's called long term strategic thinking, something they just never got.

As for background checks and assault weapon bans, that train left the station a long time ago as well. We could put every sociopath who owns weapons under surveillance but that would be tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of citizens you would have to keep track of. There's probably twenty here in my little town, twisted, damaged bastards with arsenals just ready to go off. The NRA is right on this one; if you want to be safe in America you want to be armed.